As a parent, I am used to my children asking questions. Thankfully, most of the ones they ask are easily answered. What’s for dessert? Usually ice cream. Can I stay up just a little longer? Usually no. What is the capital of Wyoming? Always Cheyenne.
But there are some questions that my children ask that require more thought. Why is a negative times a negative a positive? How do I know I’m really me? Why are flowers pretty? And then there are questions that have no answer. It is this last kind of question that has been with my family for a decade.
It was the day I met the two little boys who would be my sons that the question first came up. That very day, I was already anticipating that one day they would ask, “Why couldn’t she keep us?” The orphanage director provided some clues, but the total information we had about her amounted to two sentences and a shrug. It just didn’t make sense, and the more I thought about it, the less I understood.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t fathom the concept. I could. I had read Oliver Twist and Les Miserables. I had seen Annie. I was almost a year into the adoption process, so I was familiar enough with the concept of the word “orphan.” I knew that parents are sometimes unable to care for their children, but attaching that concept to those sweet, adorable boys was proving impossible. And the question refused to budge. Why couldn’t she keep them?
The opacity of the question wasn’t the only thing about it that bothered me. Any attempt at an answer focused laser-sharp on the fact that our family’s very existence, in some part, depended on tragedy. In a perfect world, there would be no infertility, and my wife and I would have our own children. In that same Eden, mothers would be able to provide for their children. There would be no sickness, no poverty, no addictions. No orphanages.
But, as everyone finds out sooner or later, this isn’t a perfect world. Tragedies happen. There’s no getting around it, but tragedies need not defeat us. Tragedies need not leave hope desiccated and lifeless. Infertility and abandonment need not mean the impossibility of family. Love is adaptable. Given a chance, it can grow in the harshest environments, and where there is love, there is hope.
And so, we adapted and began our adoption journey—a journey of false starts and long waits, a journey that involved government bureaucracies, one of them formerly communist, a journey that stretched to the other side of the world and whose ending transformed our once empty spare room into a bedroom for two little boys. And we were happy. And they were happy. But the question remained, unasked for years but not unanticipated.
Only now, the question was somehow more foreboding because finding the answer meant finding out about her, and that knowledge would keep us from putting tight borders around our little family. That knowledge would open a gate that could never be closed. And I began to fear that knowledge, and for a time I avoided the question.
But, as every adoptive family knows, the question won’t be ignored for long. So after many years of pondering the great mystery of our family, I decided to do what others have done throughout history when faced with etiological loose ends. I created a myth. It took nearly seven years and, much like our adoption journey, contained many false starts and frustrations, but at the end of the process, my book, Sobornost, was finished and contained within its pages my very best attempt to answer that haunting question.
After researching post-communist Russia of the early 1990s and the challenges its women faced, after reflecting on what the orphanage told us, after scouring the internet and learning the stories of other women who had placed children for adoption, I could offer more than a shrug to my children, and while I still couldn’t provide concrete history, I could provide plausibility. And that was something, at least.
But beyond a plausible plot, my writing journey had brought certain truths about our adoption journey into stark relief. One such truth was that tragedy, even horrible tragedy, can become fertile soil from which good, even the greatest good, can sprout. Another truth was that, perhaps, the possibility of a human family isn’t just some ideal but a real possibility that is always lurking just beneath the surface of all of our relationships. If what were once a group of strangers could become a family, if a series of tragedies could provide a fertile field for love to grow, what’s to keep us from treating other strangers as family or seeing all the potential good present in any situation?
We need not ever feel alone because our next family member might be only a meeting away. We need not ever feel hopeless because there is no circumstance so great that love might not conquer it. And we need not have all the answers. Sometimes questions exist not to be answered but to be asked.
And what about my sons’ birth mother? What of her tragedy? Her loss? Her loneliness? Do these grand discoveries extend to her? I hope they do. I believe that, somehow, they must. But these are other questions for which I have no answer.
Austin, 40, is the adoptive father of four children from Russia. Inspired by his adoption experiences, his first novel, Sobornost, was published in 2012 and was a quarterfinalist for the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. He lives in Alabama with his wife, four children, chocolate lab, and black cat. When he isn’t earning a living as a software engineer, parenting, or keeping peace between the dog and cat, he writes. He can be found at http://www.austinwimberly.com. Sobornost can be found on Amazon, Kindle, etc.